>> well, a short-term deal only benefits the president if the understanding of the fiscal cliff is real and the consequences of it are thoroughly understood. i don't think there's a lot of evidence in the country yet that that's true. you have a couple saying it might not be such a bad idea to go over the cliff. it might concentrate the mind further. the president reluctantly send this idea, the budget control act, all the deadlinees deadlinees, as part of a long, tortuous negotiation. he now regards the negotiating process as largely a mistake and will never negotiate again on the debt ceiling. >> but the benefit for everyone, democrats and republicans of voting on something before the deadline, is that the stock market has now gone down five days in a row. we are now below 13,000. nobody knows what is going to happen on january 2 if there's no deal. the markets might not react very much. they might take a huge hit, and no one wants to be responsible for that. >> the market cares most about the debt ceiling and defaulting. if you talk to all of the big business leaderes, the various or